Hard Times. Чарльз Диккенс

statements, and showing that the same people would resort to low haunts, hidden from the public eye, where they heard low singing and saw low dancing, and mayhap joined in it; and where A. B., aged twenty-four next birthday, and committed for eighteen months’ solitary, had himself said (not that he had ever shown himself particularly worthy of belief) his ruin began, as he was perfectly sure and confident that otherwise he would have been a tip-top moral specimen. Then came Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, the two gentlemen at this present moment walking through Coketown, and both eminently practical, who could, on occasion, furnish more tabular statements derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known and seen, from which it clearly appeared – in short, it was the only clear thing in the case – that these same people were a bad lot altogether, gentlemen; that do what you would for them they were never thankful for it, gentlemen; that they were restless, gentlemen; that they never knew what they wanted; that they lived upon the best, and bought fresh butter; and insisted on Mocha coffee, and rejected all but prime parts of meat, and yet were eternally dissatisfied and unmanageable. In short, it was the moral of the old nursery fable:

      There was an old woman, and what do you think?

      She lived upon nothing but victuals and drink;

      Victuals and drink were the whole of her diet,

      And yet this old woman would NEVER be quiet.

      Is it possible, I wonder, that there was any analogy between the case of the Coketown population and the case of the little Gradgrinds? Surely, none of us in our sober senses and acquainted with figures, are to be told at this time of day, that one of the foremost elements in the existence of the Coketown working-people had been for scores of years, deliberately set at nought? That there was any Fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in convulsions? That exactly in the ratio as they worked long and monotonously, the craving grew within them for some physical relief – some relaxation, encouraging good humour and good spirits, and giving them a vent – some recognized holiday, though it were but for an honest dance to a stirring band of music – some occasional light pie in which even M’Choakumchild had no finger – which craving must and would be satisfied aright, or must and would inevitably go wrong, until the laws of the Creation were repealed?

      ‘This man lives at Pod’s End, and I don’t quite know Pod’s End,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Which is it, Bounderby?’

      Mr. Bounderby knew it was somewhere down town, but knew no more respecting it. So they stopped for a moment, looking about.

      Almost as they did so, there came running round the corner of the street at a quick pace and with a frightened look, a girl whom Mr. Gradgrind recognized. ‘Halloa!’ said he. ‘Stop! Where are you going! Stop!’ Girl number twenty stopped then, palpitating, and made him a curtsey.

      ‘Why are you tearing about the streets,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘in this improper manner?’

      ‘I was – I was run after, sir,’ the girl panted, ‘and I wanted to get away.’

      ‘Run after?’ repeated Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Who would run after you?’

      The question was unexpectedly and suddenly answered for her, by the colourless boy, Bitzer, who came round the corner with such blind speed and so little anticipating a stoppage on the pavement, that he brought himself up against Mr. Gradgrind’s waistcoat and rebounded into the road.

      ‘What do you mean, boy?’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘What are you doing? How dare you dash against – everybody – in this manner?’ Bitzer picked up his cap, which the concussion had knocked off; and backing, and knuckling his forehead, pleaded that it was an accident.

      ‘Was this boy running after you, Jupe?’ asked Mr. Gradgrind.

      ‘Yes, sir,’ said the girl reluctantly.

      ‘No, I wasn’t, sir!’ cried Bitzer. ‘Not till she run away from me. But the horse-riders never mind what they say, sir; they’re famous for it. You know the horse-riders are famous for never minding what they say,’ addressing Sissy. ‘It’s as well known in the town as – please, sir, as the multiplication table isn’t known to the horse-riders.’ Bitzer tried Mr. Bounderby with this.

      ‘He frightened me so,’ said the girl, ‘with his cruel faces!’

      ‘Oh!’ cried Bitzer. ‘Oh! An’t you one of the rest! An’t you a horse-rider! I never looked at her, sir. I asked her if she would know how to define a horse to-morrow, and offered to tell her again, and she ran away, and I ran after her, sir, that she might know how to answer when she was asked. You wouldn’t have thought of saying such mischief if you hadn’t been a horse-rider?’

      ‘Her calling seems to be pretty well known among ’em,’ observed Mr. Bounderby. ‘You’d have had the whole school peeping in a row, in a week.’

      ‘Truly, I think so,’ returned his friend. ‘Bitzer, turn you about and take yourself home. Jupe, stay here a moment. Let me hear of your running in this manner any more, boy, and you will hear of me through the master of the school. You understand what I mean. Go along.’

      The boy stopped in his rapid blinking, knuckled his forehead again, glanced at Sissy, turned about, and retreated.

      ‘Now, girl,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, ‘take this gentleman and me to your father’s; we are going there. What have you got in that bottle you are carrying?’

      ‘Gin,’ said Mr. Bounderby.

      ‘Dear, no, sir! It’s the nine oils.’

      ‘The what?’ cried Mr. Bounderby.

      ‘The nine oils, sir, to rub father with.’

      ‘Then,’ said Mr. Bounderby, with a loud short laugh, ‘what the devil do you rub your father with nine oils for?’

      ‘It’s what our people aways use, sir, when they get any hurts in the ring,’ replied the girl, looking over her shoulder, to assure herself that her pursuer was gone. ‘They bruise themselves very bad sometimes.’

      ‘Serve ’em right,’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘for being idle.’ She glanced up at his face, with mingled astonishment and dread.

      ‘By George!’ said Mr. Bounderby, ‘when I was four or five years younger than you, I had worse bruises upon me than ten oils, twenty oils, forty oils, would have rubbed off. I didn’t get ’em by posture-making, but by being banged about. There was no rope-dancing for me; I danced on the bare ground and was larruped with the rope.’

      Mr. Gradgrind, though hard enough, was by no means so rough a man as Mr. Bounderby. His character was not unkind, all things considered; it might have been a very kind one indeed, if he had only made some round mistake in the arithmetic that balanced it, years ago. He said, in what he meant for a reassuring tone, as they turned down a narrow road, ‘And this is Pod’s End; is it, Jupe?’

      ‘This is it, sir, and – if you wouldn’t mind, sir – this is the house.’

      She stopped, at twilight, at the door of a mean little public-house, with dim red lights in it. As haggard and as shabby, as if, for want of custom, it had itself taken to drinking, and had gone the way all drunkards go, and was very near the end of it.

      ‘It’s only crossing the bar, sir, and up the stairs, if you wouldn’t mind, and waiting there for a moment till I get a candle. If you should hear a dog, sir, it’s only Merrylegs, and he only barks.’

      ‘Merrylegs and nine oils, eh!’ said Mr. Bounderby, entering last with his metallic laugh. ‘Pretty well this, for a self-made man!’

       CHAPTER 6

       Sleary’s Horsemanship

      The name of the public-house